PUBLISHER
Actes Sud

BOOK FORMAT
Hardcover, 7.5 x 8.5 in. / 168 pgs.

PUBLISHING STATUS
Pub Date 11/19/2019
Active

DISTRIBUTION
D.A.P. Exclusive
Catalog: SPRING 2020 p. 105

PRODUCT DETAILS
ISBN 9782330125196 TRADE
List Price: $39.00 CDN $55.00

AVAILABILITY
In stock

EXHIBITION SCHEDULE

Arles, France
Espace Van Gogh, 07/01/19–09/22/19

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ACTES SUD

Unretouched Women

Femmes à l'oeuvre, femmes à l'épreuve de l'image

Text by Eve Arnold, Abigail Heyman, Susan Meiselas. Photographs by Clara Bouveresse.

Revisiting three canonical 1970s photobooks that redefined feminism through photography

As feminism gained momentum in 1970s America, three photographers—Abigail Heyman, Eve Arnold and Susan Meiselas—published massively influential photobooks informed by the movement.

The first, Heyman's Growing Up Female (1974), is a kind of feminist diary: the photographer casts a lucid eye at her own life and questions the imprisonment of women in stereotype roles. The second, Eve Arnold's The Unretouched Woman (1976), shows unknown women and celebrities in spontaneous everyday moments. The photos were deliberately not retouched or staged and offer a nuanced vision of women far from the glamor of glossy magazines. The third, Susan Meiselas' Carnival Strippers (also 1976), is the fruit of three years of investigation into fairground striptease sideshows in the Northeastern United States.

Unretouched Women reveals the innovations these three photographers launched in the book medium.

PRAISE AND REVIEWS

Bookforum

Lauren O'Neill-Butler

Unretouched Women, a companion book to the show, is smartly broken up into two parts: "Women Behind the Lens," which features contact sheets, maquettes, and other production documentation, and "Women Before the Lens," which looks at connections in the images covering makeup and presentation intimacy and the body, and women at work. "Behind" and "before": These photographers were always bearing witness.